Southern Moderate African American Issues

Ram H.S. Basketball and My Attitude

How much of high school sports is reading eyes? Where are they going…what’s next…who is getting the ball? Is it fair to have the weight of a community riding on young shoulders? It’s not tribal warfare like Braveheart but when Bainbridge won the state football championship with a head coach, I don’t personally know him, from Worth County, it was like watching Hoosiers.

For the record, the kids should relax and have fun. I went to high school with some vocal fans that never played varsity anything. At the end of the day, youth sports is about character-building. I have been sitting in the same spot at the Worth County gym for 20 years. In high school, my best friend and next door neighbor Gene was point guard, QB1 and a track star. He told me it isn’t called “point” guard because the player points at others; the “one” guard is the quarterback or point of attack.

Worth County has two bright point guards now; you see determination in their eyes and the same on their teammates faces. The Lady Rams have a young lady who wears Number 1 and she has heart. As an underclasswoman, she got so flustered with losing. It was as if she was saying “we trained for this, we know this…let’s execute during the game.” She works at the best soul food restaurant in South Georgia and I would ask in the summer if the Lady Rams would be right this year. Number 1 would nod like “yes and you old folks need to get a life.”

The Rams point guard is Kobe. Ok, when your name is Kobe, you can hoop from birth. It’s like being name Tiger “Woods” and playing golf or Usain “Bolt” and running the 100. For 20 years, I have been watching Nethers and Bentleys play point guard at Worth County. Will I live long enough to watch the preschool Nethers at the game this week play point guard here also?

It must be rich having a gym full of supporters and the Nethers as a family are there. In two decades, the White family is the other one I can remember rolling in like 20 deep three nights a week. So, I played tennis in high school and a little in college. The next time a family member watches me play will be the first time but I played a non-revenue generating sport—no spectators, no glory, no pressure.

You know, tennis and golf are actually squads and not teams. Playing on a team involves working with others. “You can’t sink while others float because you are all in the same big boat. There is no “i” in team. Teamwork makes the dream work.” Kobe and Number 1 are good. Number 1 throws no-look passes so smoothly that the person she is throwing them to didn’t know they were coming. Kobe and the Men’s 2 guard have the ability to take over the game or as they say get their own shot. But, as I watch the games, you hear former Rams saying that the other team would then double team the hot hand. I came to realize the other night that Kobe was looking to draw the double team and pass to his open teammates.

When Kobe Bean Bryant was 19 years old, he played on his first All-Star Team. Karl Malone came over to set a pick and Kobe waved him away. The showman in Kobe wanted to take the defender off the dribble…he wanted to break a fool’s ankles for the crowd. As Kobe grew older, he came to better understand playing with others.

The federal government job application form use to include a section called Knowledge, Skills and Abilities or K.S.A. Knowledge is what you learn from others, skills are what you develop from practice and abilities are what you got from God. Great players (Kareem, Jordan, Bird, Magic, LeBron) have all three while a good baller might have two out of three. For example, Karl Malone’s Utah Jazz teammate John Stockton wasn’t the best athlete from the abilities standpoint but he had developed skills. Allen Iverson had skills and abilities but was too cocky to learn from those who went before him. Today, you hear stories about top rookies in all sports asking if they could visit a legend for a few days to pick his brain about every aspect of the sporting life—on and off the court or field.

The current Rams are fortunate because they have dozens of former Rams at their games…pick those brains. It occurs to me that confidence is a big part of sports and sports reflect into life in general. I am nerdy so I will always put the books over the extracurricular but maybe they worth together. The Rams and the Lady Rams have the personnel to have successful seasons if they gel together as teams. Hey, the Rams head coach hooped at Albany State when I was in college, he knows ball and it seems the Lady Rams have a good coach as well. Listen to them.

At the end of the day, sports and high school in general is practice/preparation for life. The NCAA has a spot that says “There are over 400,000 NCAA student-athletes, and most of us will go pro in something other than sports.” I like that because the purpose of sports for most students is preparation for work and life… work is a team…family is a team.

My neighbor Wiley Brown played on a Louisville basketball team that won the national championship in 1980. Tia Lewis played D-I ball at O.D.U. before playing professionally overseas. Anfernee McLemore was an honor graduate from Worth County who recently selected Auburn for college hoops over Sanford, Georgia Tech and Yale. You can’t live vicariously through others but I was like please go to Yale for me. Hell, I have a Yale t-shirt anyway because he is brainy enough to go there for grad school after basketball and we support academic success also…you know last year’s salutatorian lives two streets over and a sister from the next street was valedictorian years back.

For the record, I might have had the worst attitude of any Worth County athlete ever. I wouldn’t play football because I didn’t like people yelling at me…still don’t. But, they yell at you in Marine Basic Training, at S.E.A.L. School, at Ranger School in Columbus and in college with fraternity hazing. Are they yelling or encouraging?

The Lady Rams once had a coach who yelled during games at J.C. and her teammates….stuff like dumb and stupid. At her son’s little league game, I asked her if it would be cool if someone yell at him like that and she said it wasn’t yelling it was motivation. Well, maybe I was wrong because her son played in the N.F.L. and J.C. has a condo and Benz in Florida. Students can develop mental toughness from sports but they shouldn’t be disrespected.

My bad attitude had me telling my tennis coach that she couldn’t coach me because I was a better player than she….young and silly. That coach made us do conditioning over and over. While we wanted to smash overheads at the net like basketball players want to dunk, she made us practice lobs over and over. Today, I do those conditioning drills weekly and I am relatively fit..thanks, Coach. When I am in trouble in a point, I toss up one of those lobs so high it hits a cloud. Those lobs buy you time to regroup and get ready for the next shot. Coach wasn’t teaching tennis; she was teaching life. When things get rough, you need to be cool, remember your training and regroup. My funky attitude even had me quitting the marching band. While playing an instrument was fun, I couldn’t have directors and select leaders fussing at me because I couldn’t worth a nothing. Hey, sometimes it’s just not your thing. My hard tennis serve was much better than their scales or whatever but I was always at the concerts cheering their achievement. Several classmates went to college free with those horns and started life without student loans.

Jeremiah and Brandon are my favorite bball Rams. They were successful and coachable in school and are professionals and fathers today. During a girls’game back in the day, point guard Brandon asked former Ram standout Harold how he could get a nice job like P&G in the future. Harold said you just keep doing what you are doing because P&G is a team just like basketball: take care of your assignments, be on time and focused, remember your training, be responsible for your mistakes, work well with others and be productive. Hey, Harold has made more money at the plant than he would have made playing pro baseball.

Ok, why do all the kids love basketball when baseball is easier on the body and you play until you are like 50. Those baseball players stand around then go eating sunflower seeds in the dugout half of the game. We didn’t have sunflower seeds on that lonely tennis court; we just had sun…lots and lots of blazing sun.

All Rams have the internet at their disposal. You tube has interviews with the coolest of the cool: Arthur Ashe, Bjorn Borg, Julius Erving, Wynton Marsalis, Tony Dungy, Herm Edwards and Mike Krzyzewski. Those are some real TED talks.